Tony Weaver Jr., known for his webcomic The UnCommons and for his nerd-galore TikTok account, has landed a major book deal.
His isekai fantasy manga The Dream Frontier has been picked up by Macmillan‘s graphic novel imprint First Second Books. And not only is he placing the book with First Second, he’s also building a studio within the imprint to “bring the book to fruition,” he tells Tubefilter.
“Rather than a traditional arrangement where they’re partnering an author with an illustrator, they have such great belief in the idea that the publisher and the imprint are investing resources to build an internal studio in-house whose sole job is, we’re cranking out these books,” he says.
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With those resources, Weaver was able to spend a full year looking for just the right artist for The Dream Frontier. He ended up finding illustrator, colorist, and inker Irene Yeom, who’s worked on several other books for Macmillan and who’s proven to be an invaluable creative partner on the series, Weaver says.
As for what The Dream Frontier has in store for readers, it’s set in a world where everyone has their aptitude evaluated at the age of 14. When main character Sygnus’s aptitude test fails to place him in any future career, he has one summer to figure out what he’s good at and retake the test. This search for his skill leads him to a virtual reality MMORPG called The Dream Frontier–and its mysterious competition, where the first person to reach level 100 will win $100 million.
This is far from Weaver’s first foray into novel-writing. He’s the creator of and lead writer on The UnCommons, the flagship IP of his media company Weird Enough Productions, and also previously signed graphic novel series Weirdo with First Second. That series is due to be published in 2024 or 2025.
Weaver says he grew up reading manga series like One Piece–long works with sprawling casts and a multitude of interwoven storylines–and while doesn’t think The Dream Frontier will be quite the monstrous hundreds-of-volumes size of his childhood favorites, he does hope its diverse ensemble cast can appeal to millions of teenagers.
“I think for me, the place where stories get boring is that you focus on one person and there’s no way that one person can be everything for everybody,” he says. “When you can create an ensemble cast and send them on the journey together, what happens is you get this really amazing opportunity as a writer to build a world around that collective journey. It’s not just Sygnus’s journey.”
The Dream Frontier is slated for publication in 2026. Jennifer Gates and Erica Bauman at Aevitas Creative Management (for Weaver) and Maeve MacLysaght at Copps Literary Services (for Yeom) negotiated the deal with Macmillan for world rights.
